VAST vs VPAID

VAST vs VPAID

Protocols like VAST and VPAID serve a critical role in digital advertising for publishers and advertisers. Both were launched by the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) as part of the IAB Video Suite to serve the digital video industry and further in-stream video ads. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at the VAST and VPAID scripts to help you understand their importance for your publisher ad stack.

VAST

VAST is short for Video Ad Serving Template which is a standard template that helps video players work with a publisher’s ad server.

Through the script, video players can find out which ads to play, how to display them, the length of the ad, functionality involved and more. It enables in-stream video ads to be served across VAST compliant video players.

The latest release of VAST was in 2018 with the IAB releasing VAST 4.1.

Pros

Allows video players and ad servers to connect and speak the same language.

This standard allows for a scale of operations and opens the door for publishers to sell more ad space on their video inventory.

Cons

Previous VAST versions didn’t support viewability standards.

It has other limitations compared to VPAID such as not enabling interactivity, measurement, and preloading of ads.

VPAID

VPAID is short for Video Player Ad-Serving Interface Definition. Similar to VAST, it tells the video what ad to play, but gives more interactive ad elements like overlays to help boost ad performance for advertisers.

This includes ads with actions such as prerolls with CTAs for the viewer to learn more and elements like play, pause, skip, enlarge and more. Advertisers can also track key performance metrics such as viewability, completion rate, and clickthrough rate.

VPAID also helps advertisers setup more personalized campaigns off of geographic information. For instance CTAs for different regions like LA or SF.

The latest release of VPAID was in 2012 with the IAB releasing VPAID 2.0.

Pros

Enables ad interactivity and measurement

Publishers using VPAID have the opportunity to earn more ad revenues as their video players can display a broader range of video ads.

Cons

VPAID is known to slow down publisher sites

It’s also not ideal for ads outside of a mobile environment.

Conclusion

VAST, VPAID or both? Which should you use or implement and how? All these digital advertising specifications can get complicated at times.

If you want to find out how to take advantage of video ads, get in touch with us today and our ad optimization experts will take a look at your setup.

“I’ve been watching this team at work for the past week, and I have to say – they are really good. Top-notch professionals. The back-end has been completely gutted and reworked properly, and the advertisements/networks have been majorly reshuffled as well.”

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